Jose Zagal's Home Page - Games & Game Studies

Home	Talks and Slides	My GameLog	Research and Projects	Publications	Resume	Teaching
Back // GameBreadth Project // Game Ontology Project // GameLog

Grindstone (iPd) Status: Playing I started playing this game on Thursday 1 July, 2021
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
December 29, 2021 01:12:19 AM
I picked this up again and I've been playing it a little over the past few days. I'm enjoying it more than before - though I really don't like having to grind for resources that are then used up with you use your items, needing more resources and so on. Just having to "refill" my items feels onerous to me - as in, not necessary and detracting from the overall gameplay experience. I'm also excited when I find a new blueprint for something, but then I quickly lose interest when I see that the item doesn't seem that fun/useful OR that I don't have enough materials to use it well. It all seems a bit of a drag - but I'm mostly annoyed because other than that - I do have fun with the game, some of the enemies are neat to plan around and I think I'm also getting better at the game. I'm also wearing a Santa Suit that's super helpful - every now and then it'll drop an item. It's less about the item and more about how having items on the board reduces the difficulty because it gives you more/better chances of continuing a chain. Oh, I did my first 40 chain - it was on a weird bonus level I played - but still, 40 is almost the entire board!
July 7, 2021 01:54:15 PM
I'm currently on an Apple Arcade free trial offer so I thought I'd poke into some of the (afaik) exclusive games on the service. I started with Grindstone because it's the one I was most curious about and interested in playing. And...it's fine..? No pun intended - but it feels a bit grindy - I've been working my way up the levels and they're all challenging in different ways which is fun. I also like the multiple goals for each level and I've only just reached the point where I feel ok with NOT getting all the goals (e.g. unlocking the chest or getting the crown). Mostly because failing too often on a level becomes expensive really fast. When you die (lose all three hearts) you heal one and are sent back out. It costs 5 (or was it 10?) grindstones to heal a heart, and there's also a price for healing two. So, if you're not earning at least as many grindstones as you lose - well, you're draining your grindstone currency as it where. In theory, with a challenging level - I might get down to zero (currently have 200 or so) and then I'd have to literally grind for grindstones...and this all seems a bit much? The levels have an interesting pacing - and perhaps my play is still too "novice" - but I often decide to make a few small/short matches to say, get rid of 3-4 creeps of the same color just so I can set up a large match for later. Of course this is sometimes risky as you get more "angry" creeps the longer you play. Also, it seems weird that you should NOT try to do a 9-creep match because...well, if it was 10 you'd get a stone on the board! So, maybe match 2-3 of that long chain to hopefully set up a 10-chain for your next move. This seems counter-intuitive to most match games - where more matches is always better (at least in terms of score). A feature I do like - it's fun when it happens AND it also helps is that when you get a grindstone or some other on-the-board resource (e.g. creep part, sticks, ore, whatever) they fly up and land on a random space on the board. If that space is occupied- the creep gets bonked and dies. If it's a creep with a minimum skill chain to destroy (e.g. 5), the required amount goes down by one and the item bounces some other place. So, this reduces the length of the chain you need (and it's helped me out on more than one occasion). I'll keep on playing until I get tired/bored because I don't think the game runs "eternally"? We'll see...

Grindstone (iPd)